OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

Day 214: December 12

Our Lady of Guadalupe



On December 9, 1531, barely ten years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, Our Lady appeared to a native peasant named Juan Diego while he was crossing Tepeyac Hill, outside what is today Mexico City. After telling Juan Diego that she was the “mother of the true God,” she told him that she wanted a church to be built there in her honor.

Juan Diego then approached the bishop of the new diocese of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, asking for a church to be built. Without any proof, the bishop did not believe him. The Blessed Virgin then appeared again to Juan Diego, asking him to approach the bishop again. St Juan Diego obeyed her, and this time, the bishop requested a miraculous sign that would prove the story. When Our Lady appeared a third time to St Juan Diego on December 10, she said that she would provide a miracle the next day.

However, on December 11, Juan Diego’s uncle became seriously ill, and he took care of him instead of meeting the Blessed Virgin. When his uncle, Juan Bernardino, appeared to be in his final hours on the early morning of December 12, St Juan Diego left the house to find a priest.

Believing that he could avoid seeing the Blessed Virgin, he took another route. However, she still appeared to him.

The Blessed Virgin asked where he was going, and he explained that his uncle was ill. In response to Juan Diego’s lack of understanding of her great love for him, the Blessed Virgin asked him, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” She then told him that his uncle had, in fact, recovered.

Then Our Lady asked Juan Diego to collect some flowers from Tepeyac Hill, which is usually barren. He found Castilian roses, which are not native to Mexico and would not be blooming in central Mexico in December.

The Blessed Mother arranged the roses in Juan Diego’s tilma, before he proceeded to the bishop yet again. Upon opening his tilma before the bishop and other witnesses, the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was revealed as the roses fell to the ground.

The following day, St Juan Diego returned to his uncle and found him completely recovered, as the Virgin had said. Juan Bernardino reported that Mary had appeared to him and requested to be known under the title of “Guadalupe.”

Within seven years of this apparition, in which Our Lady manifested herself to the native peoples of Mexico as a sign of her maternal care, nine million accepted the Catholic Faith. Remarkably, this amounts to an average of more than 3,000 people a day, every day for the next seven years. This is the number who were converted on Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2:41.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"The truly faithful slaves of Mary quickly, easily, certainly and perfectly achieve the holiness that God requires of them in this special state. St Louis Marie de Montfort assures us that the holy Spirit "will come to their souls, will shower them with an abundance of His gifts and together with the Virgin Mary, His most faithful spouse, will form in them Jesus Christ to the glory of the Father." Grant, O Jesus that the kingdom of Mary, your Holy Mother, may come so that your kingdom may follow!"

(Ascension, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1997, pp. 423-424)

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